Bought new lug nuts… key doesn’t fit the lugs … not happy
The conversion is nearly complete, I’m waiting for a couple of brackets (which will hopefully arrive by Thursday). then I can install the bumper. The only other thing I’ll need to do is convert the headlight wiring
if you’re wondering, this is what the car used to look like:
I picked up a replica Z-Edition Rear Lip for the S14, it’s designed for the European bumper so it will need to be modified. Anyone have experience with fiberglass that would be willing to help modify it?
I’ve wanted to add an oscilloscope to my electronics toolbox for years. I’ve passed on a few projects simply because I wouldn’t be able to complete them without one. Well there are a few electrical loose ends to tie up with my LS1 swap so I finally bit the bullet and bought a DSO Nano. Much to my surprise they’ve releases a V2 of the hardware that’s even prettier than the original.
My two biggest apprehensions to buying this were that it only supports up to 1MHz frequencies and that it only has 1 channel. Ideally I like 100MHz and 2 channels at minimum but it was only $90 including shipping, which is a friggin STEAL for a digital capture scope, never-mind one that’s hand-held.
I was almost persuaded to belay the purchase again when I saw on SeeedStuio’s website that they’re taking pre-orders for the Beta version of the DSO Quad.
The Quad has 4 channels and supports up to 36MHz which makes it a huge improvement over the Nano and the pre-order price for the beta test is only $150, but the “estimated” release date is late March. Having the Nano will be an enormous improvement over not having a scope at all, and the Quad is cheap enough that I’ll wait until it’s out of Beta to buy one. Either way, I’m stoked to finally have an oscilloscope at my disposal again, since I haven’t had access to one since college.
So recently it was announced that they’re releasing a Tournament Edition of the new Mortal Kombat game due out next year.
As a long time Mortal Kombat fan this is obviously something I’m excited for, I’m even more excited since it’s an all new developer making the game and they seem to be making it a true sequel to the original 2D trilogy as opposed to continuing with the 3D mess that the MK series had become.
The Tournament Edition has me really excited because, well it’s a CE, which I love, but it’s also going to be limited to only 20,000 copies. The biggest thing about this CE is that it includes a Joystick as the main bonus item. I’m making this post because it seems that a lot of people fail to realize how much of the “real deal” this included joystick is. Allow me to demonstrate.
Here is a photograph showing the joystick included with the Tournament Edition:
Take a close look at the controls, that is a Happ Ultimate Joystick and Happ arcade buttons with Cherry micro-switches. I worked in arcade repair for several years, nearly ever arcade machine from the 2D Mortal Kombat era uses these joysticks and these buttons…
Need further proof? Take a look at these pictures:
That is an actual Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 arcade control panel, it’s a conversion machine but those are the buttons and sticks included with the kit from Midway. I wired this control panel myself, and this machine is sitting in my game room, and those are two Happ Ultimate joysticks and Happ buttons with cherry microswitches way back from 1995.
I never uploaded this pics of the LS1 S14 exhaust. I think Fujii did an awesome job!
The exhaust is painted with high temp paint, the heatshield and tip look gray only because of the flash, in person you can’t even tell that the heat-shield is there.
Long Tube Headers with 4-1 3″ collector’s, slip fit to 3″ hi-flow cats, to triple weave flex-joints, into a Flowmaster dual 3″ to 3.5″ Y-pipe, into a 3.5″ Flomaster Hushpower Pro short Muffler with a custom tip.
…built by Fuji SPL
So I got my PCM back from Pinocio Joe on Tuesday Night. (I can’t say enough good things about this guy for PCM re-flashing). Last night I went down to Fujii SPL with the new PCM in tow with plans to start the car up for the first time… and hopefully have it run more than 5 seconds.
We pushed the car out of the garage, bolted up the PCM, turn the key and it fired right up and ran… and didn’t shut off. Success!
Have no brake fluid in the car since it’s got a brake leak, but the clutch master was full so I decided to drive it a little bit… taking it slow since I only had the e-brake to stop me. At first I thought maybe the clutch was slipping, then I realized for whatever reason it wouldn’t rev past 1000RPM, the car just limped around and after doing a lap around the building I parked it back where I started.
I popped the hood and we poked around, there was a small leak on one of the heater hoses where the clamp wasn’t tight enough but everything else seemed in order. We unplugged the MAF and it made no difference, plugged it back in and unplugged the MAP and the idle got rought but it stayed running, then we unplugged MAF again (so both the MAP and MAF were unplugged) and the engine died… which is good because it meant both sensors were running.
Plugging them back in and trying to start it just cranked without firing… James decided to disconnect and reconnect the battery to reset the PCM, doing this worked and the car started again, but still wasn’t revving.
While running we pulled off the intake (and disconnected the MAF and IAT) and discovered that the throttle wasn’t opening when we pushed on the gas (it’s an electronic throttle not cable). Pushing the throttle open by hand the engine revved up no problem… we did this a couple of times but it still wouldn’t work with the pedal.
With the intake still off we shut the car off, disconnected and reconnected the battery and started it again, it was idling MUCH better this time. So Joe got in and stepped on the pedal and the engine roared to life… The thing ran flawlessly after that. We put the intake back on, hooked up the MAF shut it off and restarted a few more times without any issue.
After all that I drove it back into the garage under it’s own power.
I was a little worried when it wasn’t revving but I’m guessing it was just a stuck throttle or the PCM needed to relearn some of the sensors, or both.
Tony shot a video of the whole thing but it doesn’t seem to be up on youtube yet. I’ll post a link once it’s up.
After 2 years of dropping money on parts that don’t fit right, waiting for the right parts to come in, agonizing over wiring diagrams to make absolutely sure I’m doing things the right way and generally having a love/hate relationship with the project. Everything has come together to the point where I was able to turn the key and hear the engine roar for the first time ever.
The most recent few setbacks dealt with the radiator, I ordered over 5 sets of clamps before I received the right size (for the wise: upper clamps are for 1.5″ ID, lower clamps are for 1.75″ ID). after that I had to fabricate some custom brackets to mount the cooling fans to the radiator. You can see detailed pictures of that in my last post.
So Sunday I finished the brackets, mounted up the radiator and got everything hooked up. Joe stopped by with the gas pedal that had been modified from Fujii the only thing left was we had to go to the store and get some coolant. it drank 3 gallons of DexCool without spilling a drop…. we bolted up the pedal, turn the key and .. Crank Crank Crank… no starting, not even any sputtering.
We looked everything over, and nothing was leaking (thats good), we did have a slight gas smell, I remembered the gas cap was still off the car. I screwed that one and we tried again… still nothing. At this point we start pulling off connectors and checking for 12V, coils are getting good power, injectors are getting good power, TPS is getting good power PCM is getting good power, no blown fuses, all the relays are clicking on with the ignition, we can hear the fuel pump prime with the key turned “ON”, the butterfly on the throttle is opening and closing like it should.
I pulled out my laptop and my computer based OBDII scan tool, it states that it can find the bus network but it cannot connect because the PCM isn’t responding. I’m using the original Nissan OBDII connector and while I know I hooked up the PCM to the correct pin in the harness I never checked the that the Nissan OBDII pins matched up for GM vehicles. I pull the connector and find that while the power and ground pins are correct Nissan uses pin 7 as their data pin and GM uses Pin 2, so I swap the data pins and try to connect again… no communication still I test all 4 pins, power and ground are getting power and ground, and the serial pin has good continuity to the PCM.
We brought the laptop and OBDII cable over to Joe’s WRX to see if it worked and it read his car without any problems… now I’m concerned that I have a bad PCM, but it has to be working to some capacity because it’s turning on the fuel pump and giving me a CEL on the dash. I post up on SilviaV8 and LS1Tech asking for advice and call it a night a bit defeated.
The next day 90% of the responses I got from my posts were convinced that my OBDII port was wired wrong, despite the fact that I noted I double checked all the wiring. One person noted that I might have the fuel lines backward (ls1gip) another person (kirk) agreed and noted that gas smell I was getting was likely due to the FPR creating pressure in the tank and forcing vapors out of the EVAP vent (since it’s not hooked up to a charcoal canister) they recommended that I rent a fuel pressure tester from Autozone to confirm
That night I called up Joe and asked him to stop by and bring his OBDII scanner and a spark tester so we could test the car. He didn’t have his spark tester but he has a much more professional OBDII scanner than mine. We hook up the scanner and it read the car without any problem… a little celebration, at least we know OBDII is wired right and the PCM is good, apparently my OBDII reader just doesn’t like GM motors.
There is an EVAP code that appears twice, and a couple of codes related to the TPS and throttle body, we did disconnect the TPS while the PCM was on the night before so we just clear the codes and try again… still nothing.
I decide that we should take a trip to Autozone and get a fuel line tester and see if we’re getting fuel to the rail. We go rent the equipment, return back to the garage, hook it up and turn it over… a big fat 0psi… well we know the fuel pump is working because we can hear it the only other possible problem is the FPR… we pull apart the fuel setup and swap the send and return fittings on the FPR, and hook everything back up. after letting the fuel pump run a bit to fill the rail and prime the injectors we turn the key and the engine roars to life… like literally roars.
There’s no exhaust on it right now and when the thing starts it sounds like a Funny Car, it’s deafening and awesome and the air has this awesome smell of warm dry unfiltered exhaust.
Sadly it only runs for about 3-5 seconds before the PCM cuts off the injectors as part of VATS (Vehicle Anti Theft System). Normally this is disabled by the security module in the Corvette but I don’t have a corvette security module so after a few seconds without getting the “OK” from the security system it turns off the car. Most people get this tuned out of their PCM but I built my own module that emulates the function of the GM security module. If it works I’m going to leave VATS in place and tie it into the Nissan security system, if it doesn’t work I’m just going to do a mail order tune and have it removed.
There is a very short list of things left to do to get this car on the road… I would love to have this car make an appearance at a few club meets before the snow hits but I’m just happy to be wrapping up such a long and expensive project so I can enjoy the car and start working on something else.
Now that I’ve got my hose clamps I needed to properly secure my cooling fans to the radiator. I made these custom brackets.
